Spinach and Skittles {and everything in between}

My legs are so sore. But it is the good kind of hurt. I decided to use a light traffic hallway to do 3 sets of lunges yesterday. I have a love/hate relationship with lunges. I love the way my legs lean up quickly when I incorporate them into my work out routine. I hate actually doing them, and hate that I walk like a cowgirl afterward.

I’m currently lounging in the basement thinning out my DVR, heating pad under my hamstrings. Between this and my cuppa joe I am feeling rather relaxed. The chores will have to wait.

This isn’t what I planned to do with my Saturday. I am supposed to be in Seattle visiting my friend Reese.

But the forecast predicted snow in Seattle and poor pass conditions. A lack of snow tires/chains and not having more bars in more places, contrary to what AT&T’s advertisements would have you believe, meant I was sticking in Spokane for the weekend.

Not that I haven’t filled my time with fun adventures. Yesterday’s trip to TJ Maxx was rather fruitful.

The hubs decided to make some insanely tasty pizza utilizing this high heat process. Essentially you heat a cast iron skillet on your gas range for 20 minutes, flip it upside down, quickly create your pizza and put it on the bottom flat side of the pan and pop it under the broiler for less than two minutes. This process requires at least two people, and potholders that can stand up to high heat.

Unfortunately we had a miscommunication regarding the type of dough I needed to prepare.

I made my friend Kelly’s olive oil pizza dough, which is beyond delicious. However, this cooking method needs ultra thin dough, (which I didn’t realize), and her dough is perfect for big, chewy and billowy crust.

This dough is also a tad sticky.

I’m Edward Sticky-hands.

But at least I have a cute apron.

Sauce was made with with these bomb(dot)com tomatoes.

Mmmm fresh buffalo mozz.

Our pizza was your standard margarita (tomato sauce, mozz and basil), but I don’t have any pics of ours because I was helping. But I do have Libb’s pie prep to show you.

I don’t recommend topping your pie with pepperoni when implementing this cooking process. It may cause your pie to catch on fire.

But the results taste amazing.

Oh crispy pepperoni, how I love thee.

Sibling excitement for pizza.

Now I’m eating a spinach pancake,

and an ugly bowl of greek yogurt, blueberries, oats, chia seeds and cinnamon.

But I’d much rather be eating pizza.

Have you checked your facebook feed today? Yeah, it is Valentine’s Day. It always cracks me up to see married couples wishing each other a happy v-day via fb wall posts.

*quick check to make sure Timmah didn’t do that* phew, we’re in the clear.

I guess my body was excited about the ol Hallmark holiday, I woke up at 5:03 a.m., one minute before my alarm went off. Crazy, right? Here’s hoping I can make this a week long winning mini-goal streak. However, with all this extra time on my hands I didn’t actually get to the gym any earlier than normal. Well, I mean I got there one time (on a machine at 5:55 a.m.).

After 50 minutes filled with Katy Perry, Usher and CNN on the Adaptive Motion Trainer I did a little arm action. I haven’t worked my arms in ages, and I am thinking I may be rather sore tomorrow.

Brekkie was a less pretty version of yesterday’s creamy buckwheat with chia seeds, pecans, raisins, brown sugga and half a nanner.

With a side of bright pink sparkly heart nails…

Fun, right? I felt very, very girlie.

Lunch was oh, so good. A turkey sammie with avocado, laughing cow, lettuce, tomato and onion on a whole wheat english muffin, with a side salad.

Plus a side of operation beautiful. I thought the other teachers, aids and support staff needed a little love aside from the raging tween/early teen hormones that were wreaking havoc on our Monday. :)

Perhaps I snacked on a heart shaped sugar cookie. Perhaps.

Pretty soon I’ll be throwing two pizza’s in the oven. I know I promised a meatless Monday dish, but I really didn’t feel like cooking. Meh. Take’n’bake pizza is only half cooking, so I feel like I kinda made my man a home cooked treat.

A heart shaped pie no less.

And I baked brownies!

Oh wait, they came from a box.

Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right?

I almost forgot I promised you a peak at what I got the hubs for v-day…

‘Cause nothing says I love you like fried food.

His gift to me was a tad more appropriate for the day’o’love.

A fabu paper flower arrangement from anemone. These will look very lovely in my office at work.

Happy Valentine’s Day, or National Singles Appreciation Day, whichever you fancy.

The phrase above has been uttered to me many, many times. Apparently I have difficulty keeping my (very strong) feelings at bay.

(ahem, let me get on my soapbox for a minute, I promise I will step off soon)

This week the seventh and eighth graders started a media and advertising unit. The unit focuses on how we receive messages and why we make the choices we do. Simple enough, right? But the curriculum was lacking a little something, something. So I decided to take matters into my own hands.

In my former life I worked in various marketing and public relations positions. It all started with an internship my senior year of college with The Northwest Alliance for Responsible Media (NW-ARM). While working there I spoke to student groups about the messages advertisements send us, and how to dissect them with a critical eye.

This week I let my fingers walk over to The NW-ARM’s website to see what they had in store these days. And boy did I find a lot! I was happy to provide my growing list of resources to the language arts department, and hope to be able to bring one of the speakers to our school.

One of the main reasons I decided to go into teaching was to help children gain self-esteem. If children are told no, or your wrong, or you can’t, too often or too young they will have big obstacles to face throughout their educational and personal lives. Low self-esteem is built from many negative messages, some driven by friends or family and some via the media. With our society so bombarded by media messages at every turn it is no wonder why kids often have a hard time determining what is right, wrong and how to make intelligent decisions.

I spent a great amount of time in my undergrad* years researching the effects of media message and the role they play in our society. I figured the best way to re-direct my negative energy (toward myself, my eating habits, my body and my weight) was to educated myself. The more I learned about the harmful side-effects, (in all areas of my life), the more I wanted to push those negative feelings away. Naturally I dove into this project with excited eyes and ears.

*I majored in Applied Communications and minored in Sociology, needless to say I was VERY interested in the subject matter. In fact my Senior Thesis focused on popular female magazines and the negative impact they have on women, (a very abbreviated version of the actual title).

Here are a few (very, very short list) of my findings…

About Face: the truth behind advertising

Best and worst offenders

Media Awareness

Media Education Foundation

Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood

How to write a complaint letter about an ad           

Finding Advertisements Game (geared at 4-6^th grade students, and is very introductory)

Interested in promoting National Eating Disorders Awareness Week? (Feb 6-12 or 20-26, depending on your area) click here!

 Articles of interest:

In a World of Ads, Teaching the Young How to Read Them

Unraveling new media’s effects on children

Media and Girls

Consumerism - Protecting Children from Advertising

There are many, many more articles citing the negative impact media and advertising have on children and our culture as a whole, and while I know all of this to be true, why do I still buy into it? I try not to, yet I get sucked into asinine shows like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, (true story), and find myself poring over swimsuit pictures in US Weekly getting upset that I don’t have the perfect stomach/thighs/arms.

Why do you think this is? Why do we do this to ourselves? Comparing ourselves to models/celebrities/what we think the norm is even though we know it really isn’t?

(source)

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Click it, you know you want to
Forgive me, I can’t embed youtube clips into my post unless I do them as just a youtube post, sigh.

(Thanks for the vent, stepping off soap box now and resuming normal ramblings…)

So do you want to know how my day went aside from that?

Brekkie was pretty normal: oats with almond milk/water, chia seeds and dried apricots.

Lunch was a bland salad (literally just spring greens, spinach and dressing) with some leftover Bob’s Red Mill Vegi Soup + mozz.

Snackies consisted of a nanner,

some peanut butter topped crackers w/theraflu, (yum…),

and lots and lots of Hall’s cough drops, with inspirational messages!

Thanks Hall’s, I can conquer the world now.

The hubs decided he was so over soup, (we have Bob’s Red Mill Vegi, Homemade Chicken Noodle and Pacific Organics Roasted Red Pepper/Tomato in the fridge at the moment).  Clearly we needed to spend a little of this months restaurant budget on some pizza, courtesy of Pizza Rita, our favorite local delivery place.

Honestly, I really just want to eat everyone’s crust. Their crust is buttery & crispy deliciousness….ahhh

Now we’re all gathered in the basement watching a little movie action, Rilo included.

Love yourself today. And tomorrow.